GRADUATE DIVISION OF RELIGION                     FALL 2003 COURSE ATLAS

 

 

 

RLAR 711:  Sacred Biography: Myth and History in the Hagiographic Biography

Newby - Thursday, 2:00-5:00 

(Same as HIST 586U, MES 570R)  

 

Content: Sacred biographies, the lives of religious founders, such as Muhammad, and Jesus, and hagiographies, the stories of saints or their equivalents, convey through their narratives and through their symbols the fundamental truths, value systems and teachings of their religious traditions. Using the development of the biography of Muhammad as the primary example, this course will examine the interplay between history and myth in the formation of sacred biography. Comparative examples will be drawn from the Hindu and Christian traditions. The examination will use methods of History, History of Religions, Anthropology, Psychology and Literary Criticism.

 

Texts:

 

·   Brodie, F.M. (1971). No Man Knows My History. Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

·   Dilthy, W. (1962). Pattern and Meaning in History: Thoughts on History and Society.

·   Erikson, E.H. (1958). Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History.

·   Newby, G.D. The Making of the Last Prophet

·   Robbins, Vernon K. (1996). Exploring the texture of texts: A Guide to Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation.

·   Other readings on reserve.

 

Particulars: The course will be in seminar format. Students will be expected to participate in seminar discussions, be co-presenters of the weekly topics, and write a research paper at the end on some aspect of the material covered by the course. Students will be evaluated on seminar attendance and participation and on the quality of the co-presentation and the final paper. Prerequisites: Graduate standing in the Graduate Division of Religion, the Department of History, or permission from the instructor.

 

 

RLAR 737L: Topics in Asian Religions/ Life History: Narratives and Methodologies

Flueckiger - Monday, 10:00-1:00

 

Content: This course examines both life history narratives and the ethnographic, theoretical frameworks and methodological methods for eliciting, recording, publishing and analyzing such narratives. We will read life history narratives from several different cultural contexts that will help us to identify the cultural constructions of both narrative and “lives.” We will give particular consideration to indigenous contexts for “telling a life” in each of the considered traditions.

 

Texts may include:

 

·   Alter, Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter

·   Behar, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story

·   Crapanzano, Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan

·   Gluck & Patai, Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History

·   Grima, The Performance of Emotion Among Paxtun Women Kendall, The Life & Hard Times of a Korean Shaman

·   Langness & Frank, Lives: An Anthropological Approach to Biography

·   Lawless, Holy Women, Wholly Women

·   Menchu, et al., I, Rigoberta Menchu

·   Rosenwald & Ochberg, Storied Lives

 

Particulars: Two short papers: a book or film review of a life history and an essay addressing what life history methodologies and narratives can add to the student’s discipline of study. A final paper will consist of either a research proposal for a life history project or a life history narrative elicited by the student and analysis. Every student will be expected to conduct fieldwork for either format of the paper.

 

 

RLE 701R: Social Philosophy

Gunnemann - Wednesday, 2:30-5:30

 

Content: The seminar will read social philosophy from Machiavelli to the nineteenth century, including Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Smith, Kant, Hegel, and Marx.  Special attention will be given to the historical context and theological assumptions of the texts; and to the influence of the texts on 20th century social thought, secular and religious.

 

Particulars: Each student will be expected to lead discussion of 1-2 seminar sessions during the semester, engage in critical discussion of the reading, and write a critical research paper of about 5000 words.

 

 

RLE 736:  U.S. 20th Century Christian Social Ethics

Bounds - Thursday, 2:30-5:30

 

Content: This seminar will explore some intersecting conversations in U.S. 20th Century liberal social ethics, beginning with the Social Gospel and ending with the emergence of feminist and black social ethics. While the majority of the authors covered will be liberal Protestants, some attention will be paid to parallel Catholic conversations. Moving chronologically, this seminar will engage key conversations in 20th Century Christian social ethics through the study of representative authors. The approach will be contextual. Questions will include: how does the author understand the urgent social issues of the day? What does s/he see as the role of Christian social ethics in addressing these problems? What is the method in the doing of Christian ethics, in particular, what kind of use of social science is made? Who are the major dialogue partners from both the present and the past?

 

Texts: Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, Ward, H. Richard Niebuhr, Ramsey, Murray, Adams, Bennett, Gustafson, Curran, Yoder, Jones, Hauerwas, Harrison.

 

Particulars: leadership paper, response paper, choice of research paper or other final project.

 

 

RLL 701: Akkadian and Selected Topics in the History, Literature, and Religion of the Ancient Near East

Strawn - Wednesday, 9:30-11:00

 

Content: The course is a basic study of the language and grammar of Akkadian. By way of background to the orthography, there will be a brief introduction to Sumerian; by way of the afterlives of the language, some brief attention will be paid to peripheral dialects.  Additionally, there will be periodic seminars devoted to selected topics in the history, literature, and religion of the ancient Near East – specifically, ancient Mesopotamia (i.e., both Assyria and Babylonia).

 

 

RLHB 720 Hebrew Bible Exegesis

Petersen - Wednesday, 1:30-4:30

 

Content:  This seminar is designed to help students develop facility in the interpretation of the Hebrew bible.  Each seminar will involve analysis of a text by the use of appropriate exegetical methods and perspectives (e.g., textual, form, redaction, and literary criticism; social scientific methods).  The seminar will explore diverse genres of literature present in the Hebrew bible.

 

Texts:  Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia; other readings will be drawn from journals as well as from classic commentaries and monographs. 

 

 

RLHB 791: History of Hebrew Bible Interpretation

Hayes - Thursday, 10:00-1:00

 

Content: An examination of the history of interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures (with some attention to New Testament studies) from the days of the early synagogue and church until the early 20th century. A mixture of readings from primary and secondary texts.

 

Texts:

 

·   Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel;

·   Froelich, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church;

·   Augustine, On Christian Doctrine;

·   Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages;

·   Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages,

·   plus the major works of W.F. Albright, Hermann Gunkel, Yehezkel Kaufmann, Sigmund Mowinckel, Martin Noth, and Julius Wellhausen.

 

Particulars: Seminar attendance and participation as well as reading of textbooks required; some occasional reports.

 

 

RLHT 730: Reformation Theology and Historiography

Strom - Tuesday, 2:30-5:30

(cross-listed with HIST 585)

 

Content: This course will approach problems in recent Reformation studies through careful reading of primary texts and current historiography on the Reformation.  Throughout the course, we will read central theological texts concurrently with interpretations of the Reformation. In particular, we will examine the relationship of theology, religious reform, and popular or “lived” religion.  We will explore a number of

methodological approaches to the Reformation and religious cultures in the early modern period, including social history, confessionalization theory, and gender studies. Facility with French, German, or Latin would be helpful.

 

Texts: Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Müntzer, Eck, Canons of Trent, Hsia, Schilling, Wiesner, Ozment, Oberman, Pelikan, Goertz, Scribner.

 

Particulars: All participants will be expected to engage in critical discussion of the material. Twice during the semester, each participant will also be asked to lead discussions of specific texts. Writing assignments include two review essays and a final term paper.

 

 

RLHT 735: Topics in American Religious History: Health and Healing

Laderman - Thursday, 9:00-12:00

 

Content:  This seminar will explore the intersections of religion and medicine in American cultural and social history.  We will first briefly engage in a general examination of health from cross-cultural, anthropological perspectives, and then to more specific case studies in the American context, looking primarily but not exclusively at primary sources.  Some of the topics we will cover include new religious movements focused primarily on health, alternative forms of medicine, the rise of hospitals, public health perspectives, religious views of doctors and nurses, and recent popular interest in health and spirituality.

 

Texts may include:

 

·        Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child,    Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

·        Robert Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life

·        Lester S. King, Transformations in American Medicine

·        Meredith McGuire, Ritual Healing in Suburban America

·        Charles Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System

·        Lawrence E. Sullivan, ed., Healing and Restoring: Health and Medicine in the World’s Religious Traditions

 

Particulars: short essays, leading seminar discussions, and a research paper

 

 

RLHT 736: Topics in Religious History: 16th and 17th Century English Sermons

Hackett - Thursday, 2:30-5:30

 

Content:  The 16th and 17th centuries in England were times of a tumultuous sorting out among Roman Catholic, Puritan and what would eventually come to be known as Anglican theologies.  Sermons, even more than pamphlets, were the way in which these controversies were carried on and carried to the people of the time.   The seminar will focus on several prominent preachers of the time, reading their sermons both for overt theological content and for implicit theological perspectives which may be expressed in such as rhetorical style, use of scripture and exegetical method.  At stake is an effort to tease out a sense of the world each of these preachers understood himself to inhabit.

 

The seminar will begin with a preparatory reading of selected patristic and medieval sermons to set a historical context for the main works to be read.  We will then read sermons by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Richard Hooker, Richard Sibbes, John Bradford and John Donne.

 

The course will be in seminar format. Students will be expected to participate in seminar discussions, be co-presenters in turn of weekly material.  A research paper on some aspect of the material under consideration will be required.  Students will be evaluated on seminar participation and the quality of class presentations and the final paper.  Graduate standing in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences or permission of the instructor.

 

Texts:

 

Patristic and Medieval Background

 

·   Selected Sermons of Augustine of Hippo, Leo the Great and Gregory the Great: on reserve

·   Tugwell, Simon, edit,  Early Dominicans, (two sermons) Paulist

·   Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs, Vol.I, Sermons 1-4, Kilian Walsh, trans., Cistercian Press

·   DeGrote, Gruet, 2 Sermons in Devotia Moderna, John Van Engen, trans., Paulist

 

16th and 17th Century English Sermons

 

·   Hatt, Cecilia A., English Works of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Oxford

·   Secor, Philip, The Sermons of Richard Hooker, SPCK

·   Booty, John, edit. John Donne, Paulist

·   Sermons Xerox copies from Works of Richard Sibbes, John Miller, edit John Miller (1864), Vols II and VII

·   Bradford, John  A Sermon on the Supper of the Lord, Internet copy

 

 

RLHT 741P:  Modern European Philosophical Theology:  Jacobi, Hamann, and Schleiermacher

Pacini - Friday, 9:00-12:00

 

Content: This seminar will explore what might be called the “Pietist re-occupation” of Humean skepticism by Jacobi, Hamann, and Schleiermacher as a counter to Kantian critical philosophy and philosophical theology.  Focusing upon variant interpretations of “immediacy,” the seminar will trace one of the contributing lines of post-Kantian argumentation to the development of Schleiermacher’s Glaubenlehre. The seminar will also attempt to delineate the sense in which the line of argumentation is “Pietist.” Readings will be drawn from Hume, Kant, Jacobi, Hamann, and Schleiermacher.  

 

 

RLHT 750:  Early American Religious Thought, 1630-1860

Holifield - Wednesday, 2:30-5:30

(Same as HIST 534)

 

Content: The seminar will examine important primary source texts in the development of theology in early America, including 17th-century Puritan thinkers, Jonathan Edwards, the Edwardian tradition, Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, Old School Calvinism, Catholic scholasticism, the Mercersburg theology, the New Haven theology, the Oberlin theology, and similar movements that helped shape religious life, especially in Christian traditions, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.. We will look at several of the prominent interpretations of American religious thought during this period, including those by Sydney Ahlstrom, Bruce Kuklick, Paul Conkin, and Mark Noll.  In particular, the seminar will compare Holifield’s Theology in America (Yale, 2003) and Mark Noll’s America’s God (Oxford, 2002).

 

Particulars: Each student will have the opportunity to explore a topic in the period in a research paper that will be discussed in the seminar.

 

 

RLNT 740: Jewish Backgrounds

Holladay - Thursday, 2:00-5:00

 

Content: The seminar is intended to introduce NT graduate students to aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman world that are relevant to understanding the New Testament and Christian Origins. Besides providing a broad historical framework for understanding Judaism from the time of Alexander the Great to Hadrian, it examines a broad range of topics, e.g., Jewish apocalyptic, Qumran, Septuagint, Hellenization of Judaism, Rabbinic traditions, Jewish sects and parties. The aim is to read representative texts or literature relating to each topic with a view to identifying current issues of scholarly debate, especially as they relate to the New Testament.

 

Texts: Extensive reading in a variety of Jewish sources, including Jewish apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, Qumran writings, Josephus, Philo, Mishnah, and relevant secondary literature.

 

Particulars: Extensive reading in preparation for each weekly seminar, with responsibility for conducting the discussion of one of the topics. A final paper or take-home exam.

 

 

RLNT 770: History of Interpretation II -- Reformation to the Present

Robbins - Monday, 1:00-4:00

 

Content:  This seminar covers interpretation of the New Testament from the sixteenth century to the present.  It will begin with an exploration of forces at work in New Testament interpretation during the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter Reformation, and new developments during the eighteenth century.  After this, it will investigate the nineteenth and twentieth century contexts of analysis and interpretation of history, myth, philosophical truth, and biblical theology in which the literary-historical methods of text, source, form, tradition, and redaction criticism emerged.  Then the seminar will turn to late twentieth century modes and methods for interpreting the New Testament.  An overall goal of the seminar is to gain an understanding of the contexts that gave rise to literary-historical approaches and to assess their relation to additional approaches that emerged during the last three decades of the twentieth century. 

 

Participants in the seminar will read secondary sources as guides to primary interpretive literature.  The emphasis, however, will be on primary interpretive sources.  Specific examples of interpretation will be especially important. 

 

Texts:

 

·   William Baird, History of New Testament Research, Volumes 1-2

·   Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament.

·   Werner Georg Kümmel, The New Testament: the history of the investigation of its problems.

·   Wayne A. Meeks, Writings of St. Paul

·   Heiki Raisanen, Beyond New Testament Theology (Second edition, 2000)

·   John K. Riches, A Century of New Testament Study

·   Vernon K. Robbins, The Tapestry of Early Christian Discourse

·   Udo Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings

·   Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus

·   Anthony C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics

 

Particulars:  In addition to regular reports on the readings, seminar participants will write a series of short papers on the history of the interpretation of various NT writings through the centuries from the Reformation to the present.

 

 

RLPC 710G After Violence: Futuring Victim-Free Society

Smith - Thursday, 2:00-5:00

 

Content: “Willing the well-being of victim and violator in the context of the fullest possible knowledge of the nature of the violation . . . holds the possibility of breaking the chain of violence.” In such terms Marjorie Suchocki formulates her prescription for ‘curing violence’ in her book on “relational” theology, The Fall to Violence. Other course texts emphasize the causes of violence instead of (or alongside of) its cures. Focal for the course are systemic, structural, and institutional forms of victimization and violence that persist in human affairs from the mundane to the cataclysmic. A central consideration will be the theory of chronic scapegoating, mimetic desire, and sacred violence developed by Rene Girard (Stanford emeritus) and currently under research and critique by members of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R; see website).

 

A key framework for the course is the idea of “futuring”: assume that a visionary goal--here, for example, managing systemic violence--has been achieved at some point in the future however hopeless its actual achievement may seem under current conditions. Then speculate: How was that achievement possible? From the vantage point of projected future achievements, hypothesize: What theories and practices await development from within the current state of affairs to enable a shift toward that goal? Summary considerations in the course will include: What are next steps along a trajectory toward that ventured future, “after violence”?

 

Texts:

 

Required:

 

·   Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads

·   Christine Gudorf, Victimization: Examining Christian Complicity

·   Gopin, Marc, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence, and Peacemaking 

·   Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing/the Roots of Violence

·   James Williams, ed. The Girard Reader

·   Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment & Resistance in a World of Domination

 

Particulars: (1) 2 class presentations on required readings (above);  (2) a midterm practicum or media presentation (sample practicums available in course; multimedia resources available on campus; see course syllabus); (3) a final term paper incorporating elements of the above or major themes of the course.

 

 

RLPC 760: Theology and Personality

Hunter - Friday, 9:30-12:30

 

Content: The purpose of this seminar is to introduce several important contemporary theories of personality and selfhood in dialog with selected contemporary Christian theological anthropologies.  Attention will be given to methodological issues in relating these psychological theories and theologies to each other and to their social and cultural contexts, especially to questions of gender and “postmodern” questions of selfhood. 

 

Texts: Psychological readings will include selections from Freud, Jung, Kohut, Kegan, selected feminist psychologists, and the range of social theorists of selfhood from Mead to the Neo-Marxists discussed in Ian Burkitt’s Social Selves.  Theological readings will be drawn from Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Catherine Keller, From a Broken Webb, Stanley Grenz, The Social God and the Relational Self, Walter Wink, The Human Being, and (possibly) Alistair McFadyen, The Call to Personhood, plus philosopher Calvin Schrag’s The Self After Postmodernity. 

 

Particulars: Writing will include a critical exposition of one psychologist and one theologian plus an integrative paper.

 

 

RLR 700: Mapping the Landscapes of Religion Colloquium

Laderman - Tuesday, 11:00-1:00

(Required for first-year students of the GDR)

 

Content: This colloquium will explore current issues in the study of religion.

 

 

RLR 705:  Teaching Religion

Patterson - Tuesday, 11:00-1:00

             

Content: RLR 705 meets the TATTO course requirement for students in the Division of Religion and normally is taken in the first semester of the second year of class work. During the semester students will reflect on their teaching assistantships/ teaching experiences and explore a range of theoretical and praxis issues including course goals and objectives, student/teacher relations, why a teaching philosophy, evaluation and assessment, restructuring a course midway through, what’s religious studies got to do with it, etc.

 

Texts:  We will read articles on teaching selected by the professor and by members of the class.  Readings will focus on student-identified needs and concerns

 

Particulars: Students will each write 1) a brief paper articulating a philosophy/theology of teaching; 2) four reports from their teaching assistantship for peer reflection; and 3) develop a syllabus for a course they would like to teach.

 

 

RLTS 710P: The Doctrine of Sin: Classical and Contemporary Approaches

McDougall - Friday, 9:30- 12:30

             

Content: This seminar will explore reconstructions (and retrievals) of the doctrine of sin in contemporary theological discourse.  We will focus on diverse challenges to the doctrine raised by critiques of the notion of Original Sin, by our therapeutic and crime/punishment culture and by the changing subjects of theological discourse, e.g., women, voices from the “socio-economic underside” and nature.  The first part of the seminar will consider classical approaches to the doctrine and representative twentieth-century theologians’ positions.  The second part of the seminar will turn to contemporary Protestant reconstructions of the doctrine in light of issues of gender, collective violence (structural sin) and human responsibility.  Throughout the course we will be exploring the possibility of a common theological language for sin that would respect the complexity and heterogeneity of the human situation.

 

Texts:  The first part of the seminar will consider works by Augustine, Athanasius, Calvin and Barth. The second part of the seminar will include works by S. Jones, A. McFadyen, P. Ricoeur and K. Tanner.  

 

Particulars:  Members of the seminar will be expected to read the assigned texts carefully and to write short weekly papers.  There will be a final paper of approximately 20 pages.

 

 

RLTS 750F: Foucault and Christianity                    

Jordan - Wednesday, 9:30-12:30

(cross-listed with CPLT 751)

 

Content: Michel Foucault’s later writing is uncannily pertinent to Christianity--not only in being about it or around it, but in posing new questions or possibilities for it.  This seminar will examine the double pertinence by reading some of Foucault’s major works in connection with his lesser or occasional pieces that touch on religion in general or Christianity in particular.  We will be concerned to ask not only what Foucault thinks about Christianity, but also how far his thinking might be determined by a certain relation to it.

Texts: The readings will include Foucault’s “Discourse on Language” (“L’ordre du discours”), Discipline and Punish, History of Sexuality 1, and the selections in Jeremy Carrette’s Michel Foucault: Religion and Culture among others.

Particulars:  Members of the seminar will be expected to read the assigned texts carefully and to discuss them constructively. They will be asked to present three or four short interpretive exercises to the seminar and then to write a final paper of 15-20 pages.

 

 

RLTS 753G: Womanist Theology               

Stewart - Thursday, 2:00-5:00

(cross-listed with WS 585)

 

Content:  The aim of this seminar is to analyze the imperatives and objectives of the womanist theological enterprise and to assess its contribution to the academy, church and society.  Students will consider definitive voices in womanist religious thought by examining the development of womanist scholarship in theological studies as well as womanist historical and sociological approaches to the study of religion.  Particular emphasis will be placed upon sources and method in womanist theological reflection and their relevance to major themes and theoretical issues in Black theological and religious studies.  Among the authors explored are pioneers such as Katie Cannon, Jacquelyn Grant, Renita Weems and Delores Williams in addition to more recent scholars such as Linda Thomas, Karen Baker-Fletcher and Joanne Terrell.

 

Major Texts:

 

·   James Cone & Gayraud Wilmore, Black Theology:  A Documentary History, Vol. 1:  1966-1979

·   James Cone & Gayraud Wilmore, Black Theology:  A Documentary History, Vol. 2: 1980-1992

·   Jacquelyn Grant, White Women’s Christ And Black Women’s Jesus:  Feminist Christology and Womanist Response

·   Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ

·   Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness:  The Challenge of Womanist God Talk

·   Joanne Terrell, Power in the Blood?:  The Cross in the African American Experience

·   Katie Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics

·   Emilie Townes ed., A Troubling In My Soul:  Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering

·   Emilie Townes ed., Embracing the Spirit:  Womanist Perspectives on Hope, Salvation, and Transformation

·   Evelyn C. White, The Black Women’s Health Book:  Speaking for Ourselves

·   Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, If It Wasn’t for the Women . . . :  Black Women’s Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community

·   Renita Weems, Just a Sister Away:  A Womanist Vision of Women’s Relationships in the Bible

·   Iyanly Vanzant, The Value in the Valley:  A Black Woman’s Guide Through Life’s Dilemmas

·   Traci West, Wounds of the Spirit:  Black Women, Violence and Resistance Ethics

 

Particulars:  One 2-3-page response paper; one 7-page presentation; one 25-page final paper

 

 

Other courses of interest:

 

 

CPLT 751 002 Approaches to Bible & Law: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Anthropology

Goldman - Thursday, 1:00-4:00

(cross-listed with MES 570R)

 

Content: In this seminar, we will study the first section of the Hebrew Bible, the Five Books of Moses, as both a religious document and as a key text in the development of modern thought. Our focus will be on the concept of the Mosaic Law and how that law was understood and interpreted in antiquity and modernity. In conjunction with Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus we will engage three modern texts, each of which is a classic within its discipline: Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling,” Freud’s “Moses and Monotheism” and Douglas’s “Purity and Danger.” Each of these texts has had profound influence on contemporary thought. We will also study contemporary responses to these texts.

 

Texts: The Hebrew Bible; Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling; Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism; Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger.

 

Particulars: 1) a 2-3 page response to the assigned readings, due each week 2) a 20 page research paper due at the end of the course 3) a brief presentation of your research to the class.

 

 

JS 530: Hebrew Bible: The Book of Exodus and Jewish Interpretation

Gilders - Tuesday, 2:30-5:30

 

Content:  In this course we will read the book of Exodus in Hebrew along with examples of classical, pre-modern Jewish interpretation (midrash and medieval commentaries) and some modern exegetical literature.  Our approach to Exodus will be historical in focus, giving attention both to the ancient Israelite context in which the book was composed and first read and to its on-going life as a Jewish sacred text.

 

Texts: All class participants will need a copy of the Hebrew text of Exodus, a biblical Hebrew lexicon (Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius, Hebrew and English Lexicon is recommended), and Marcus Jastow’s Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature

 

Particulars:  Reading knowledge of Hebrew is a prerequisite.  Students will be expected to read and translate the Hebrew text of Exodus in class, as well as some selections from works of classical Jewish interpretation (Mekhilta and Rashi). Students will also prepare works of secondary scholarship and will be expected to participate actively in classroom discussions.

 

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